Devendra Kumar Mehta vs State of Rajasthan and Others

Arun Bhansali, J.—This writ petition has been filed seeking the following reliefs:-- (i) by an appropriate writ, order or direction your lordship may kindly be pleased to modify the rule 265 of Rajasthan Panchayati Raj Rules, 1996 and provide a relaxation to the effect in Rule 265 that the candidates whose result of RTET 2011 have been revised and thereby those candidates have been declared successful in level II examination shall be eligible to participate in Teacher Grade-III Level-II Direct Recruitment Examination-2013, if those candidates have crossed the maximum age limit provided for it in the meantime i.e. till 1st of January 2014.

(ii) That by an appropriate writ, order or direction your lordship may kindly be pleased to direct the respondents to provide relaxation in regard of age to the petitioner and the petitioner be declared within age by treating it to be special case.

(iii) That the respondents may kindly be directed to consider the candidature of the petitioner by treating him within age limit for the post of Teacher Grade-III Level-II (Maths & Science) in pursuance of Teacher Grade-III Direct Recruitment Competitive Examination 2013.

(iv) Any other relief which this Hon''ble Court may deem fit may kindly be granted in favour of the petitioner.

(v) Cost of the writ petition may kindly be awarded to the petitioner.

The brief facts of the petition may be noticed thus: the petitioner whose date of birth is 11.02.1978 participated in the Rajasthan Teacher Eligibility Test, 2011 (''RTET'') held by the Board of Secondary Education, Rajasthan, Ajmer (''the Board'') and was awarded 88 marks out of 150 for the Level-II. The said result of RTET came to be revised in pursuance of the judgment passed by this Court in the case of Rana Ram Jingar and marks obtained by the petitioner were revised from 88 to 91 and, consequently, he became eligible for participating in the examination of Teacher Gr.-III Level-II as the minimum requirement for participating in the said examination is 60% marks in RTET Level-II examination.

It is submitted that the advertisement for Teacher Gr.-III Direct Recruitment Competitive Examination, 2013 has been issued by the respondent-State and the last date for submitting the online application form is 04.09.2013. The maximum age for appearing in the said examination in terms of Rule 265 of the Rajasthan Panchayati Raj Rules, 1996 (''the Rules'') is 35 years as on 01.01.2014 and as now the petitioner has crossed the maximum age as provided in the Rules/advertisement, when he tried to submit his application form online for the District Dungarpur, the same was not processed on account of his having crossed the maximum age limit provided for the post of Teacher Gr.-III Level-II.

It is submitted by learned counsel for the petitioner that on account of the revision of marks in RTET, 2011 the petitioner became eligible to appear in the competitive exam for Teacher Gr.-III Level-II, however, as in the process of revision of marks the petitioner has crossed the maximum age limit, the petitioner is sought to be debarred from appearing in the said competitive examination. It was also submitted that the petitioner appeared in the RTET, 2011 and had secured marks which made him eligible for appearing in the examination, 2011 and 2012, however, on account of award of wrong marks, the petitioner was deprived of appearing in the competitive examination held earlier and, the marks having been revised, petitioner should now be permitted to appear in the Competitive Exam, 2013 relaxing the age as his failure to obtain eligible percentage in RTET, 2011 was on account of mistake committed by the Board and he cannot be penalized for that purpose.

We have considered the submissions made by learned counsel for the petitioner and have perused the material placed on record.

The provisions of Rule 265 of the Rules reads thus:--

Rule 265:--Age - A candidate for direct appointment to the service must have attained the age of 18 years and must not have attained the age of 35 years on the first day of January following the last date fixed for receipt of application. Provided that (I) the upper age limit for a candidate belonging to schedule caste or schedule tribe shall be relaxed by 5 years, for women candidate of general category it shall be relaxed by 5 years. (II) for women candidate of SC/ST and OBC of State of Rajasthan, it shall be relaxed by 10 years etc. etc.

In terms of the said Rule, the candidate for direct appointment to the service must not have attained the age of 35 years on the 1st day of January following the last date fixed for receipt of application, which in the present case is 01.01.2014 and admittedly petitioner would be about 35 years and 10 months of age on 01.01.2014 and would thus be ineligible for appointment. The Rule envisage relaxation for the candidates belonging to Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and Women candidates and does not envisage any other relaxation.

It is of course true that in RTET, 2011 petitioner was awarded 88 marks out of 150, which came to be revised to 91 out of 150 making him eligible for appearing in the examination held for Teacher Gr.-III Level-II direct recruitment. However, in our opinion, the result of eligibility test and its revision by the authority/Board holding the examination cannot affect the eligibility of a candidate provided in the Rules. There may be a case where the eligibility condition itself may have been affected on account of some circumstance, which condition of course can be taken into consideration, however, on account of a particular event, happening in relation to one eligibility condition by itself cannot affect or make out a case for affecting other eligibility condition like age.

Merely because the result of RTET, 2011 came to be revised by the Board in terms of the directions issued by this Court and, in the meanwhile, the petitioner became over age in terms of eligibility relating to the maximum age as provided in the Rules cannot be a ground to question the validity of Rule 265 of the Rules. The prayers made by the petitioner seeking modification of Rule 265 of the Rules and provide for a relaxation from condition, in which, the petitioner finds himself, cannot be countenanced. Further, a petition with prayers made to read down or relax the provision relating to the maximum age for direct recruitment cannot be maintained and validity of provision cannot be questioned on the grounds agitated, which appears to be an isolated case. In view of the above discussion, there is no substance in the writ petition and the same is, therefore, dismissed.